More reasons for the Christian religion and no reason against it, or, A second…

But yet that indeed every word is Divine and sure, which is delivered as Gods word, I now assert.

My meaning in that limitation is this: There are some passages (as I said) spoken only historically, and contain the Narration of some words of the Devil (as to Job, Christ, and as most think, to Saul at Endor &c.) and some words of wicked men, and some words of weak and common persons: And all these are not mentioned as the words of God: As the words of Job's ⟨p. 48⟩Friends, which God reproved; The words of the old Prophet that lied in the name of the Lord to the young Prophet to his destruction: The words of Jonah, I do well to be angry; and the words of Christs Enemies, Persecutors, &c. Yea the mention of the Old Prophet remembereth me, that all words spoken as in Gods name, and that by a pretended, yea by a real Prophet, are not therefore the words of God; Micheah only may say true, while Zidkiah and all the rest of Ahab's Prophets may lie, as in the name of the Lord. Balaam and the aforesaid old Prophet, and many such may say true, when Gods Spirit doth inspire them, and yet lie at another time in Gods name. And what Paul meaneth by his [not the Lord but I] I leave to consideration. Whether in 1 Cor. 14. all those that he correcteth for a disorderly using even the Miraculous gifts of tongues and prophesying, &c. had their Timing and ordering of their gifts from the same Spirit that gave them the gifts, you may judge. And some Protestant expositors have doubted, whether James ⟨p. 49⟩and the rest were guided by the Spirit, when they persuaded Paul to go into the Temple, to show the Jews that he observed their Law: Though I think that Counsel was of the Spirit, because Paul concurred in obeying it. But one instance I more doubt of my self; which is, when Christ and his Apostles do oft use the Septuagint in their Citations out of the old Testament, whether it be always their meaning to justific each translation, and particle of sense, as the word of God and rightly done; or only to use that as tolerable, and containing the main truth intended, which was then in use among the Jews, and therefore understood by them: and so best, as suited to the auditors. And so whether every citation of numbers or Genealogies from the Septuagint, intended an approbation of it in the very points in which it differeth from the Hebrew Copies;